Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Ita Buttrose For Sydney Lord Mayor ?

Ita Buttrose

More on the push by a group of inner Sydney businessmen who have become disgruntled with Clover Mayor, the local Sydney MP and Lord Mayor of Sydney.

Both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph have followed up on our story about the growing anger over bike lanes that have sprung up around already crowded city streets. Much of the anger has been caused by the loss of hundreds of parking spaces which has resulted in increased parking fines for motorists which in turn funds the bike lanes which are used by only a handful of residents.

The Pedestrian Council of Australia has called the lanes a "compo time bomb ".
Clover Moore also seems to have lost support in the normally left leaning chain of inner city newspapers published by the Alternative Media Group.
The Shuttle has learnt that the business group plan to bring in publishing identity Ita Buttrose to run for Lord Mayor as an independent, an election she would have every chance of winning given her popularity and fame.

Not only does Ita have impeccable business and political connections she is seen as an astute business person in her own right having worked for the late media mogul Kerry Packer as well as being Editor in Chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph for Rupert Murdoch and eventually her own publication ITA. She was also for many years the chairperson of National Advisory Committee on AIDS.

Clover Moore with Bill Clinton

Buttrose was behind the creation of the magazine CLEO which proved to be a money spinner for Packer and went on to edit his personal favourite publication the Australian Woman's Weekly that under Ita became per capita, the largest-selling magazine in the world.

Ita was featured in the telemovie series Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo earlier this year. Actress Asher Keddie played Ita in the series and will reprise the role in the follow-up series later this year.

Clover Moore has been the independent MP since 1988 and Lord Mayor since 2004. Her popularity has plummeted lately and she only just scrapped back into parliament in the state election earlier this year.